Ask the expert: Help me manage my time

Claire Wieman, clinical director of Ellis Medicine Inpatient Mental Health, used to hate making lunches for her family. She would dread it, resent it, overthink it. Then she shifted the way she thought about the “chore,” remembering it was because she loved her family and wanted them to eat a healthy lunch that she did it each day.
This simple change in mindset — something Wieman touts along with resetting priorities — can help you feel less busy and more rewarded by the things you do each day, she says.
“I’m telling you, the lunch process has changed for me by the way I think about it,” she says. “You’re doing it because it’s a loving gesture and you’re a good mom.”
We interviewed Wieman, who also has a private counseling and life-coaching practice, for time-management advice for parents.

Q: Are we really as time pressed as we feel?

A: Absolutely not. Busyness is a state of mind. When someone has the perception they’re excessively busy, it’s either because they’re being pulled into the rat race image that busier is better, more productive, and kids who are more involved are more successful. Or your priorities are out of whack. You’re doing too many activities that don’t bring joy or fulfillment.

Q: How do you set limits on the activities?

A: Start by having a family meeting. Between parents first, and if it’s a single parent, parents and kids. Have a conversation about what are our values and core beliefs as a family? There’s no right orwrong answer. Some may say education; some may say sports. What is our family about, what’s important to us? What do we want to achieve this year?
You might learn a lot of fascinating things about your kids or spouse or yourself. You might discover your priorities are out of whack, and you need to make adjustments. Would a family game night be more rewarding than playing two sports, one of which is not valuable? Busyness is a state of mind. When you’re doing things that make you happy and fulfilled, you’re not busy. Sometimes, it requires getting creative as a parent. A mother may say “I’m so disgusted my kid is into video games. That’s it, I’m enrolling him in another sport.” Now the kid is stressed, the mother is busier, and no one’s happy. What does it mean, the video games? That conversation would be part of the family meeting. Them playing video games is the same as you reading the paper and drinking a cocktail when you come home, a way to unwind. Or is it that they have a knack for electronics? It’s shifting your perspective and tuning into what makes your kids tick.

Q: After a full workweek, a pile of chores are usually waiting on the weekend. How do you get those done and still rest and spend quality time with family?

A: At the risk of sounding corny, it’s really my core belief that the more you’re able to focus on gratitude in your life and focus on the things that bring joy, gratitude, the less the “chores” of life bother you.
Make a conscious choice of where your thoughts are going. For myself, I made a list of 100 things that I love. When you’re in that place where you’re being aggravated by your spouse, kids, or chores you’re doing, when you can switch your thoughts over to something that brings pleasure, it change the neurochemistry in your brain. If there’s absolultely things that can’t be eliminated, happiness is a choice.

Q: Even if we are going top-speed, is there a way to relax and fool ourselves to feel like we’re not running on a treadmill?

A: Again, it’s back to the idea of it being a mindset. If you want to fool yourself into a perception of feeling relaxed, take inventory of what you’re busy with and re-evaluate. Wanting kids to be well-rounded comes from a good place in parents. Those are great goals.
One of the greatest ironies: Sometimes it’s the most involved, committed parents creating anxiety in a child. “They think I need to do more, because me just being me isn’t enough.” It’s not the intention. I’m talking about healthy families. Kids have subtle anxiety that they need to be something they’re not. Find out what they enjoy.
It’s a balance. How is your collective family time looking? Do community service as family. There’s not a message in that. It takes you out of the you and puts the focus on someone else. You are not going to come back from community service feeling busy. When you’re feeling like you’re not finding that balance, that’s always a good place to start. It doesn’t have to be complicated stuff. It can be helping a neighbor, bringing something to a nursing home. Simple tacks start a domino effect of positive interactions.Q: Are there safe ways to use the large amount of time we spend in our cars to get things done?A: Books on tape. When you have long drives, particularly when you’re in a place where you don’t think you and your teens are communicating well. They don’t talk to you. Your anxiety goes up, you asked more questions, they get annoyed. Then you’re nervous, and it turns into resentment. It’s a cycle.
Disengage from the power struggle. Listen to something in the car that’s beneficial like ‘“7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens,” by Stephen Covey. Information is going in. You feel like you’re doing something. You can do without seeming like you’re doing. Kids respond like that. Writers like Stephen Covey are successful for a reason. It’s not coming from mom and dad. When they think you’re too interested in what they have to say, they don’t talk.Q: If we only have a few minutes, what are the important things to do to make sure we ensure our family feels loved, cared for?A: I’m a strong proponent of reading to your kids a few minutes every night. Nurturing brings the day full circle. It’s inexpensive. There’s ways to get messages into the child’s subconscious. If there’s a problem your family is grappling with, find a story or book that relates to that.
When you go to a motivational speaker, they open up with a story to hook the audience, get connected, plugged in. If you have 10 minutes to give, you can accomplish so many different avenues to read something that’s relevant, that means something to the familiy.

Q: For adolescents?

A: Set up something you can commit to as a family. Decide in family meeting. Parents have a faulty belief that if they made a mistake, it’s the end of the line. You’re actually role modeling positive self-esteem by saying “Mommy blew it, now I know better, we’re going to do things differently as a family.” Usually it’s just as simple as hitting the reset button, calling a family meeting. Be the one who doesn’t care when the child rolls their eyes, still do what’s important. We’re going to come up with something we can commit to as a family to make things more bearable. Need to come out of the family meeting with everyone feeling good.
If the household’s gotten out of control, your job is to supportively but authoritatively get things back under control. Might not need to be at every soccer game. Dinner together just on Sundays. Figure that out as a group. Going back to what brought joy to the family at one point.
Like in couple’s therapy, say, tell me about the last time it was fun. When was the last time things felt really good in the household? Build the ideas from there. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

4 Responses

I don’t really see any actual “advice” here. I understand trying to see the positive in your life’s work, rather than seeing it as chores, but nothing here really gives me any tips as to how to manage my time.

Yes, I do my chores because I love my family – of course I pack lunches because I want them to have healthy meals and I do laundry because I want them to have clean clothes… but that doesn’t mean that those things are not drudgery that don’t take time from what I would rather be doing.

I disagree that being busy is a state of mind. When you work full-time and raise children, you’re busy. That’s life. I don’t think that sugarcoating it or trying to pretend that you love packing lunches really solves any problems.

What I would have liked to see from this post (and from the earlier posts from “experts”, for example the one about sleeping) is some specific, targeted advice about how to streamline your life. For example, what are time-saving measures that a busy parent can take to more effectively multi-task?

Just as a bit of constructive feedback, to make these Ask the Expert posts more interesting/useful, I would like to know (1) what makes this person an expert (I see that she is director of mental health, but I am not sure where that correlates with time management) in this particular topic, and (2) specific tips for the topic at hand, more so than just feeling happy about what you have to do.

I am not sure that this really tells the reader anything constructive.

Don’t mean to be harsh, but I do generally have a lot of respect for this blog, but I think this Ask the Expert feature has been falling flat. I say this only because I think it could be a great thing, but I think that the experts could be better chosen and the questions more specific or probing.

I disagree with the previous comment. I find Claire Wiemans Advice to be useful. Sure we are all beyond busy but the way we think about what we do as working mothers can make a big difference. I think she hit the nail on the head when she said sit down with your family and figure out your priorities. Streamline the activities. I think parents now a days feel they should let their kids do every thing resulting in stressed out unfocused kids and parents that are running in all different directions.No one is happy and no one focuses. I applaud this article and choice of author . Claire sounds like she has a lot on her plate. I imagine being a director of an inpatient psych unit for kids has to be time consuming not to mention intense. Then she comes home to her husband and kid. Thank you TU for this article!

As a single working Mom, I think this was terrific advice from Claire Wieman. And, I think it permeates other states of mind as well. I find myself getting anxious, down, busy and overtired all the time. I don’t think these tips on streamlining and implementing your priorities mean “pretending” to be more into something than you are. (as the first poster claims) I think the message here is to actually change the definition of what these things are to you and the joy will follow suit. I also think it takes help. Some people can rely on their partner to help them find the value in things that totally suck. Others need a professional. Others read Oprah books.

I’m with #1 on this. This really just seems like a bunch of “think yourself happy”. While I agree that it is good to take time to reevaluate your priorities and and look at the positive things in your life, none of that is going to get the dishes washed or the oil changed or the yard mowed.

The idea that “Busyness is a state of mind” just seems like junk. I’m not busy because I think I am. I’m busy because I have a full time job, an infant, a marriage and a house. I’m not choosing to feel busy. It’s just that at any given moment, dinner needs to be cooked, the baby needs to be changed, the toilet needs to be cleaned and my husband would like me to acknowledge that he exists. I feel like she’s making light of the stress working parents feel trying to balance and that’s counterproductive. If you are able to work full time and raise children without feeling any stress or guilt, that’s wonderful. But most of us can’t and telling us we’re just thinking about it the wrong way isn’t helpful. No matter how much I tell myself I’m cleaning toilets to make my family happier, it doesn’t change the fact that I still need to take the time to do it away from my husband and my son.